


bad blood

by spicyjarvis



Series: the ineffable idiots [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel/Demon Relationship, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale and Crowley are so fucking in love it's unreal, Blood, Crowley Whump (Good Omens), Crowley has nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Holy Water, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), I use capitals in the story, In which the title has nothing to do with the fic, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), It's GAY!!!!!!!, It's just the song I'm listening to as I write the tags, Just not in the summary or title, LIKE ALL GOOD FICS!!!!!!, Let me say this again: humans are ASSHOLES!!!, M/M, Nightmares, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Sequel, Soft Aziraphale (Good Omens), Torture, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 18:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19818238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyjarvis/pseuds/spicyjarvis
Summary: admittedly, aziraphale is terrified. terrified, because he just doesn’t know what to do or what’s going to happen. it’s so shockingly out of character for crowley to crave contact as much as this, to be so anxious and shaky. whatever happened in his mind while he was sleeping, it must have rocked his world to the core.SEQUEL TOBLACK & WHITE





	bad blood

**Author's Note:**

> honestly i should start streaming myself as i write because i turn into a fucking crackhead

The sun setting over London’s city skyline is a sight that Crowley could never forget for as long as he lives - it paints stripes of reds, pinks and purples across the sky in a brilliant crescendo of colour, casting golden pools across the high-rise buildings and the bustling streets below them. The breeze is bitter and cold but Crowley barely notices the chill; he simply sits to drink in the display before him before it’s inevitably pushed under the horizon by the velvet black blanket of the night sky.

But the night sky never comes. No, Crowley watches as everything around him starts to contort from the attractive view of early evening, summertime London to a boxy room of murky grey walls and a concrete floor. Where he was once sat comfortably on a rooftop, he’s now sitting on a stiff wooden chair, bound with cold chains. On the ground around his feet is a devil’s trap and above him is the glare of a singular swinging ceiling light.

It’s silent. Completely and utterly. The low hum of London’s streets is gone. There is no movement in the room other than his own. He can’t even hear the whine of the electricity in the lighting above his head.

He wants to say something - to call out, to scream, _anything_ \- but it’s as if he’s completely frozen. No noise comes out of his mouth. His limbs feel too sluggish and heavy for him to even try to move them. His chest and stomach feels so tight that he can barely suck in a proper breath.

In order to rid of the ache in his eyes he squeezes them closed, but when they open, there’s an unfortunately familiar figure stood a couple of feet in front of him, just outside of the devil’s trap. Dark hair, trimmed facial hair, stinks of something disgustingly and sourly Holy. He’s entirely motionless. There’s no emotion in his eyes.

Nothing and no one shifts, but Crowley feels a change in the air and suddenly his eyes are leaking salty tears, his throat raw and burning. He glances down at his feet to see a couple of sage snippets scattered around the inside of the trap. The man in front of him hasn’t moved. Neither has Crowley.

There’s hot blood running down his arm and chest. He can feel it there, sliding down his skin, wave after wave of sickening, dizzying nausea washing over him like an angry ocean over the seaside rock pools. There’s no pain. And still, neither him or the man has moved as of yet.

That is until Crowley blinks and suddenly the man is holding a water bottle.

It’s empty.

There's Holy water on his flesh and it’s everywhere. It’s fucking _everywhere_ and Crowley is screaming. It’s as if someone’s taken a bolt of lightning and pushed it through his veins, every tendril burning and burning and burning like fierce, liquid fire, and for too many long, hideous minutes, all the demon can see is violent, blinding white.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I had to. I had to. I’m so sorry,” the man says to him.

The room is spinning.

“Crowley.”

Deep breaths.

“Crowley.”

One, two, three.

“Crowley.”

It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, but you know pain. You’ve had it worse.

“Crowley.”

The room is still spinning, but now the grey walls and the concrete floors are being ripped away and there’s… black.

“Crowley!”

And within the darkness, there’s a pair of gleaming white wings.

.

Aziraphale is just stirring a herbal tea bag into a cup of boiled water when he hears an unusual thrashing sound from just next door, where his partner is supposedly sleeping the stars away in their bed.

Tea forgotten, he pads across the landing and peers worriedly into the bedroom. He doesn’t know what he is expecting but it definitely isn’t what he got - the duvet is strewn haphazardly across the bed, and Crowley is underneath what’s still on the bed, shifting, twitching, chest heaving as he unconsciously hyperventilates.

The very sight sends fear dashing through Aziraphale’s every molecule and he’s at the demon’s side in an instant. Wary of touching him (for he’s been told that stirring a highly agitated demon doesn’t have ideal consequences, and he can’t help Crowley if he’s not around to do so), he rips the rest of the duvet off his legs and gets a good look at his face.

“Crowley,” he tries.

Nothing changes. 

Crowley’s entire body is shaking like a leaf in the wind and there’s a good amount of sweat slathered across his sickeningly pale skin. 

“Crowley.”

Somewhat frantically, Aziraphale calls out for his partner three more times before he realises that calling his name just won’t stir him. With Crowley’s state growing more and more concerning, the angel acts admittedly with a dash of panic and slaps a hand glowing golden with a miracle onto the demon’s sweat-coated forehead.

Crowley sits up with a gasp and Aziraphale just about collapses backwards onto the floor.

The demon’s hand grips the sheets so hard that his knuckles go bone white and his claws are tearing holes in the material. “Angel?” he murmurs, voice uncharacteristically soft and quivering. “A- Zira?”

“I’m here, dear,” Aziraphale says, sitting on the bed beside him.

The angel doesn’t think he’s ever seen Crowley so relieved to see him before today. He clings onto Aziraphale as if his very life depends on it, pulling him down desperately so they’re lying next to each other, burying his face into the crook of his neck.

Admittedly, Aziraphale is terrified. Terrified, because he just doesn’t know what to do or what’s going to happen. It’s so shockingly out of character for Crowley to crave contact as much as this, to be so anxious and shaky. Whatever happened in his mind while he was sleeping, it must have rocked his world to the core.

He lets the demon hold onto him, bringing his only free hand up to run his fingers through his partner’s fiery reddish brown hair. It’s damp with sweat down to his scalp.

They listen together to the lulling hum of London’s nightlife outside. 

“I don’t have very many nightmares,” Crowley murmurs into the quiet after a while.

“I know, dear,” Aziraphale says. “I know.”

He doesn’t push the demon to talk about it. He should, at some point, but not now.

“I was there again,” Crowley continues. “I was in that room. There was a bullet in me again. There was more Holy water.”

It makes Aziraphale feel queasy just thinking about that God forsaken day a good six or seven weeks ago, where Crowley had come bowling into the bookshop with a wound that oozed black blood and the sickening smell of flesh burned with Holy water.

The angel adjusts Crowley’s damp black shirt so he can see where that dizzying wound used to be. No evidence of the incident save for a jagged white scar remains on his skin. Demonic beings don’t tend to scar when wounds heal, but wounds splashed with Holy water are a different story. He runs a hand over it to distract himself from the hot, unangelic anger that curls up inside his chest.

“There’s nothing there, dear,” Aziraphale reassures him, rubbing a thumb tenderly over his collarbone. “There’s no wound there anymore. I promise. It’s just your memories playing tricks on you, my boy.”

For but a moment, Crowley doesn’t move. Then, with the etchings of a smile on his lips, he says to Aziraphale, “I’m not sure if it’s you or if it’s just an angel thing, but you really are the light of my fucking life. You know that, right?”

Aziraphale could explode with adoration, but instead, he just nestles deeper into the bed, letting Crowley flop an arm over his chest. He’s not so tense anymore; in fact, he’s definitely more liquid than anything as he practically melts into the angel’s side.

A good twenty minutes of comfortable, mutual silence pass. Aziraphale doesn’t really like to doze as much as the demon does and so he usually departs from the bed and busies himself just a couple of hours after Crowley falls asleep, but as he listens to his partner’s breath gradually slowing with the lull of sleep, he doesn’t think he could ever want to be anywhere else in the entire known universe.

**Author's Note:**

> errrrmmmmmmm  
> comments would be cool as shit?  
> [my discord server](https://discord.gg/SgGFvDC)  
> [my Tumblr blog](https://spicyjarvis.tumblr.com/)


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